Better late than never, right?
School was interesting last week, because the teacher had the nerve to get sick! Somehow, after going 10 years without having an illness that required a visit to the doctor and antibiotics, and 15 years with getting strep throat, I picked it up somewhere last week. And somehow, and I’m not sure how, we managed to have school every day. Bunny was a big help to me–she did a lot of the reading for me, since my throat hurt so badly. We didn’t read Miracles on Maple Hill every day, though…some of those chapters were just too long to ask her to read, and were completely out of the question for me to get through!
Actually, all things considered, I picked a pretty good week to get sick. Turkey and Bunny continued working with decimals in math, so they didn’t need a whole lot of instruction from me there, and spelling was also a review week. Ladybug was on week two of the letter “U,” so even she didn’t have a whole lot of new stuff.
We did finish World War II in history this week. In addition to our regular reading from A History of US, we also listened to a few different old-time radio shows that were recorded during the war, and they were a big hit with everyone (especially me!). We talked about the different things that were mentioned that related to the war: rationing, the sugar shortage, the draft, war bonds, and drives of different kinds. Some of the episodes were totally focused around the war effort; others had more subtle references, but there was definitely a common theme in all of the radio shows from that time period! As an added bonus, when we went to the Cardinals game on Friday night, we saw a B25 flyover, which was one of the planes we learned about in history. Turkey was beside himself when heard the announcement before the game…he couldn’t believe we actually got to see one of the planes we read about in flight!
We also finished the Old Testament in religion. We talked a lot about the Israelites in captivity, and their return to Jerusalem. We also talked about how the Bible isn’t always arranged chronologically, and you have to keep in mind when things happened when you’re reading about it. We’re looking forward to reading the Christmas story next week!
In science, we took a break from our anatomy study to learn a bit about the flowering trees in our area. We took a nature walk, and took lots of pictures, and then identified the different trees by their blossoms. The children were particularly interested to learn that a red maple has different blossoms based on whether the tree is male or female. To be honest, that was news to me, as well!
I’m hoping that nobody else gets sick, and next week, we can get into the post-war period and the New Testament, and pick up again with our read-aloud!